Reviews : Sardar, Ziauddin (ed.). Building information systems in the Islamic world. London, Mansell, 1988. vi, 170 pp. £25.00. ISBN 0 7201 1971 5

at Universiti Utara Malaysia, Kedah, on 20-2 October 1986. The earlier book was reviewed in the Journal of Librarianship in 1988 (2). He has now edited a selection of the contributions of others to the congress, excluding, however, those which dealt with the resources and needs of single countries. His readiness to impose a theme has made of this a more cogent and more unified work than many conference proceedings; let this be said at once. Sardar’s own introduction fits the pieces into the jigsaw and makes some general observations on the prospects for the development of information systems within the Muslim world, directed to its needs and independent of the West. ’The overall picture’, he says, ’appears gloomy ... the decisionmakers in Muslim countries are still unconcerned about the inadequacy of the information structure’ (p. 6). It is clearer from this book than from its predecessor how difficult is the problem that he and his co-workers have set themselves.